Not necessarily. The admin does not need to have access to the content of classified material. Why wasn't it encrypted? Encryption should be usually, in such a situation as that of the NSA, at least two-key or three-key encryption, especially for highly classified data, you need at least two-key encryption that guarantees that you must have two people to de-crypt it.
It is fine to have an administrator access to the file, especially in cases where the file needs to be restored in cases where it was lost. But the admin does not need to access the *contents* of the file. Why not just encrypt end checksum it so that in case it is lost, it can be retrieved, checked against the checksum WITHOUT having to know the content?
Also, any sane system in such an environment such as the NSA should have full access protocols, logged at least with three backups and automated access-pattern analysis and reporting. In an NSA-environment, I would rather have *more* false positives and than the other way around in case an alert goes off.
Not to say I condone what the NSA did - definitely not and in my view it is not only unconstitutional and illegal (except, obviously, the foreign surveillance, which seems not illegal) but it is also completely immoral and unethical.
But regardless: In such an environment, I would not only triple-encrypt but also log every access, failed or otherwise, and have automatic access-pattern analysis software running all the time. Especially when I have new temps or employees, I wouldn't even allow them access to "real" data for the first 3-6 months, using a TrustedOS with fake-access layers. Apart from that, I would want an OS that also prohibits copying of any data to any untrusted device... well, you get the gist.
Basically, the GDR (former Eastern Germany) had similar problems with their border guards: guards would usually patrol the border in pairs (two guards at any given time). And this is obviously a necessary thing in border patrol.
But since the government couldn't trust their guards and since there indeed was a possibility that the guards would just jump across the border to Western Germany, they had a brilliant plan: (1) they made sure that each of the guards came from a completely different area of the country, and (2) that they didn't spend too much time with together in order to build trust between them. So, for the case (2), the government decided to create new pairs every week or so... it worked quite successfully.
Now, the question, obviously, is whether you *want* to be something like the former Eastern German Government.
I believe there are a lot of ways of protecting data against malicious employees - one being the way the Eastern German Government did (this might be a good solution actually for the NSA). Other ways are making sure that the employees in question can never copy any data by any means, whether it is by blocking USB-ports, not having any drives, not allowing *any* personal devices at all, including no cameras, smartphones, etc. You might even force the people to use a company-provided mobile phone even for their private calls (without snooping into their calls) without cameras, data connection, etc (just calls+sms).
I throw all my movies, tv shows, and songs into directories on a NAS.
Then I point plex mediaserver to the directory - running on a Mac (currently an iMac or MacMini) and use Plex client to access it.
If Plex stops any support and kills the app, I can switch to XBMC or any other solution - heck I can even switch to iTunes (all my movies/TV shows are in mp4-format anyway) or just use something like VLC to watch them.
I *do* have a copy of my music on Google Music Services (20k songs) and on iTunes Match, for the convenience - and it is also good to have to additional backup places on top of my other backups, but apart from that, I don't rely solely on these cloud services. I.e., cloud is a nice to have, but not my sole source of media/document access - merely a secondary or tertiary or so backup solution... (for non-sensitive, non-private data; e.g. my photos are NOT on cloud, except the ones I actively make public).
Hmm, early in my life I learned that "if a pupil doesn't learn, it's not his fault. It's the teacher's job..."
I can't agree with you out of my experience as most of the people I'm "supporting" (in terms of tech support within friends and family) DO understand the need for security, encryption and so on. Normally they wouldn't know much about it, but it took me some time to explain them, in plain english, why it is so important to encrypt data if it's either sensitive, private or a combination thereof, including emails, private hard discs, photos, and anything uploaded to the cloud.
P.S: My insight about teacher vs pupil didn't come when I was a pupil - instead, rather when I started being a teacher...
Thank you very much for this great explanation. Now I understand.
So, in fact, what is happening now is exactly what these laws were meant to prevent - e.g. with regards to Tesla Motors. I have experienced these unwanted side effects every time any government tried to regulate an industry with very specific laws with the intent of protecting one group of people from another... be it consumers against Big Business or one side of business against another.
Thanks again, this helped me understand the history of these laws - though they make even less sense now (though I understand the circumstances back in the 1940's & 1950's)
I thought there was a real reason historically but it just seems that car dealers effectively lobbied their state governments to introduce these "Franchise Laws" after they were established. And it was in order to "... protect their investment in real estate and showrooms, etc..." - So, as you said, the traditional protectionist malaise as everywhere (reminds me of the stupid solar industry in Europe which actually managed to convince the EU Commission to introduce tariffs on Chinese solar panels... up to 67%... now the Chinese are striking back with tariffs on European products *sigh* - will this never end?)
From what I understand, Elon Musk wants to control the Purchase Experience as close as Apple does with their computers.
Remember the time before Apple Stores? When you went into a computer store to buy a Mac, the sales guys would try to sell you anything else but not a Mac. Because it was so much easier for them.
With the Apple Store, that all changed and the purchase experienced is fully managed by Apple.
Elon Musk, being an adherent of Steve Jobs' approach, also wants to display his products in the best possible way and he believes that only sales people who exclusively sell Tesla cars (i.e. stores that only sell Tesla cars) can sell it right and that these people should then be also employed by Tesla Motors.
I get that and if I was him, I would do the same. This is really a crucial time for Tesla (and electric cars in general) and I wouldn't want any GM, Ford or Chrysler-sales person trying to sell my cars - next to all the other cars he has on display...
I'm sorry, this may sound stupid, but can anyone point me to directions where I can find something about WHY this is the case? I.e. why is it forbidden for car manufacturers in the US to sell cars directly to consumers?
I'm not native, so I don't know and it sounds outlandish for. The TFA has a link but the text there is awful to read, so any help really appreciated.
The human brain can perform around 200-2,000 Petaflops (0.2 - 2 Exaflops) - when we compare it to computers.
The problem is that we can only access the conscious part, which is probably in the range of 100-200 Flops (Note, no mega, giga, or tera).
The subconscious part is where the real processing power lies. If we could simulate that in a computer, it would be tremendous in maybe understanding how it works.
For example: the human brain has the ability to "foresee" the future within a timeframe of around 0.2 seconds (or less). How does it do this? How does that work? Is it only a result of huge processing power or something else? Does two exaflops result in consciousness?? Questions after questions...
First learned it the wrong way - VIC 20 / C64 - Basic (with the C64 'programming manual')
Then learned the right way - PDP11/23 at the high school where I started programming first in Pascal and later in C... - in fact, I didn't really study it - It was not mandatory teaching but the school had a PDP11/23 clone and they offered "voluntary" courses for pupil. I couldn't join so I complained so loudly until they gave me an account on that machine "just to shut him up" - and I started learning programming "the right way"... Self-taught.
When thinking about DRM, remember that the company's ONLY purpose for existing is to make a profit.
Wrong, and completely wrong. The profit is a means to an end - even, especially, within a company perspective. Basically, the company needs to make a profit in order to be able to pay an interest on equity and loans, to invest into newer products/services, i.e. to invest in further growth (however you may define 'growth') and to have some money left for 'rainy days'.
Profit here is defined as the difference between revenue and costs - if revenue is higher, you have a profit, if it's lower you have a loss.
In any case, the profit is NOT the only purpose for a company's existence - it is a means to to exist, being able to re-invest and grow and pay an interest to those people who provided it with the capital it is using.
The assumption that companies' ONLY purpose of existence is profit is a fallacy and has been debunked already with Adam Smith.
Going back to the OP (an on-topic): No, there is in fact not a really good reason for DRM from the consumer's perspective - DRM usually restricts the consumer's right to do whatever he/she wants with the product in question.
There is one potential use of DRM though - if, by using certain DRM techniques, you (as the producer) offer differentiated pricing, e.g.: 1) Watch/read/listen once - 0.19 USD 2) Watch/read/listen unlimited times - 0.99 USD 3) Unlimited watch/read/listen incl re-sale and lending to friends & family (used-sale) rights - 1.49 USD 4) Unlimited rights, except creating and distributing multiple copies for commercial purposes - 1.99 USD
In this case, it could be of interest even for consumers as the pricing is tiered based on the rights - again, it is important that the *pricing* matches the rights (the prices above are just examples)
I would suggest NOT to use any (commercial) solution that stores your emails in some weird BLOB from which there is no export possibility at one point. As long as any (commercial) solution supports something like maildir, you will be fine - anything else will be a sure guarantee that you won't be able to read your emails anymore once the solution-provider is gone and there is no documentation about their storage format.
Lastly: on backups - don't look for anything that is email-specific - I mean with that: treat your emails like any other important file/data that you have. There's nothing wrong with being paranoid with regards to backups (I have a 4-level-backup system for my emails, photos, music, and other important documents... the only thing I'm missing at the moment is an off-site backup solution for these...)
There were enough really good solutions proposed above:
1) Standardize on one format - preferably maildir(1) 2) Convert all your emails into rfcxxxx (i forgot - but you can look it up) and copy to maildir-format 3) on Linux or other *nix-based systems, you can use many tools to search
(1) I have 15 years of email, about 60GB, roughly 120,000 Emails (sent + received). I use Mac OSX, so I have stored them in Mail.app - because Mail.app uses something like maildir-format and I will never lose my emails, even when I switch to another client. Every time a year ends, I create a two new folders under Archives/Inbox and Archives/Sent respectively with the year in for digits, e.g.:
Archives/Inbox/2012 Archives/Sent/2012
Then I move the emails to the respective folder. From then on, I exclude these entries from "standard default search"; Only when I purposefully want to search in them, I choose to do so.
This has worked quite well for fifteen years now - and before Mail.app, I used to use PowerMail, Eudora, Outlook Express, Mutt, Pine, and so on - now I standardized on Mail.app with its maildir-structure and am happy.
Photoshop 1 was only available on a Mac. I remember receiving the first "public beta" (Photoshop 0.9) some time in 1990 or so and it was awesome - jawdroppping awesome...
In any case, you would use MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) those days, which I think is still one of the best team-development tools. And the language-of-choice (well, in fact, nearly the only choice) for developing on a Mac at those days was Pascal + Assembler.
All these comments and requests for "blasphemy" etc, somehow remind me of "Fahrenheit 451" - I'm afraid, because of all these demands, we're really on the wrong track and move towards the world described in Fahrenheit 451...
I already commented on Tomi Ahone elsewhere, but here is my repeat.
Tomi Ahonen and people like him did all this mess at Nokia.
When you read his bio, you'll see the worst self-praising bulls... I've ever seen in my life.
And no, he really has no clue.
I had couple of articles written between 1984 - 1987, all restored without any problems. Reason? They were written on paper, which shows that that's probably one of the longest-lasting and most transferable/restorable data storage media.
http://www.caps-project.org/cache/DigitalMediaLifeExpectancyAndCare.html
Then again, the access time, especially the random access time, is not really good.
Anyway, I could restore them to harddisc easily and without any mistakes - I could actually fix some mistakes in the original file.
Joking aside, I have an original NeXTcube OD and would like to restore some data from that, but I can't find a NeXTcube OD drive anymore... Any help?
Luckily, there is also the European High Court of Human Rights as well as other EU regulations, which would prohibit such a law.
Sometimes, the EU, even though it's a bureaucratic monster, seems to be the last resort for citizens of countries like Italy.
(Yes, I know, the EU itself also introduces some stupid, unconstitutional regulations, but again, there we have the European Courts of Appeal...)
Actually, throughout Schengen countries (this is around 23 in Europe), you don't need any ID to travel except for airline travel where they check your name on your boarding pass against your name on a photo ID (but this could also be just a drivers license, or any other official looking photo ID) - and this check is done by airline personnel only.
When you travel by car, feet, train or ship throughout Schengen countries, you will notice the border crossing only by change of street signs, language or car plates - or by the ratio of beer:wine, good cuisine:bad cuisine, and so on.
-snip-
According to official figures released by the Turkish military for the 1984-2008 period, the conflict has resulted in the capture of 14,000 PKK members, and the death of 17,000 PKK members, 6,482 soldiers, and 5,560 civilians.[5] The conflict particularly affected the tourism industry.
-snip-
And still traveling to Turkey is as easy as to most other European countries, especially as a EU-citizen, you only need an ID-card, nothing more.
I doubt that there are anyone in our current government here in Germany with any sense at all: talking about shooting down planes, collecting internet usage data, introducing "stop-signs" in order to "prevent" child pornography, banning violent games, heck they even briefly discussed banning "Gotcha".
No, seriously, I lost the believe that there is any one person in politics in Germany with any sense at all. They are all "... a bunch of jerks to be put... " - to paraphrase Douglas Adams (rip).
Back in 1988/89, while I was working for a small HW/SW company in Berlin, I inherited code from four different "groups" of people:
1. From one external developer who was supposed to write some embedded stuff in C:
He delivered the code and went on holidays to the caribbean (I am not exaggerating). Imagine, this was the time without email and mobile phones. Actually, I didn't inherit it directly but a colleague. And someone else had given the contract to that external person without asking us.
Anyway, we had to install it on a mission-critical power amplifying thingy (I don't know what it was, I'm a software guy). It just didn't work... Then my colleague, who didn't know C, asked me if I could have a look at the code because he didn't really understand it (he was an assembler coder only). The code looked like this:... #define BEGIN { #define END } #define THEN { #define IF if #define WHILE while #define FOR for #define FUNCTION #define PROCEDURE void #define REAL float... (you get the picture here)...... FUNCTION DOSOMETHING (REAL in, INT out) BEGIN...
FOR (...) BEGIN
END...
IF (...) THEN
ELSE
END END
--- I started crying
2. It was from a physicist who worked there as programmer for a while and left. He developed in Turbo Pascal.
The code was really nicely structured, he had written a really nice guide how to structure and write code. It was readably without any comment - perfect.
The one thing... it was the most inefficient code I had ever seen and it used some tricks of Turbo Pascal 3, which drove me really crazy when I tried to bring it forward to TP4/TP5 (was it OVLs? I dunno anymore)
3. Two external guys developed another piece of software as a new module for (2) above. They insisted that they should use Turbo-C. I don't know who said "yes", but after a while I received their code to integrate it as a separate module (actually separate exe) to our package.
Integration was no problem, it worked, everything was fine. Except when a client asked for some changes. I had to dive into the code and try doing some changes... Well,... it was object-oriented C - no, it was NOT C++, it was their own flavour of object-oriented C they had developed...
--- I started crying again.
4. The last example was actually an operating system we developed for a small self-developed computer based on C-64 (it was for QS-systems for car manufacturers; this piece of hardware had built-in analogue and digital measurement-device inputs and so on). The code was beautiful, it was fast, efficient and... readable. It did everything we wanted and I understood everything. It was faster than a C64 and so on...
I really loved that "OS"... the drawback?? He was such a genius that he became an alcoholic and had to leave the company and we couldn't continue developing the stuff anymore...
Throughout my 27 years of computing, the worst thing that happened to me was inheriting software from various different sources at the same time. But other than that, all the other stuff I can only say: "Been there, done that" (yes, even punch-cards, PDP/11s, Vixens... ahm, VAXens, etc. -- no, no magnetic cylinders)
Slashdot Mirror
The thing is that if they can *only* carry what they have in their mind and have no other evidence, nobody would believe them...
Not necessarily. The admin does not need to have access to the content of classified material. Why wasn't it encrypted? Encryption should be usually, in such a situation as that of the NSA, at least two-key or three-key encryption, especially for highly classified data, you need at least two-key encryption that guarantees that you must have two people to de-crypt it.
It is fine to have an administrator access to the file, especially in cases where the file needs to be restored in cases where it was lost. But the admin does not need to access the *contents* of the file. Why not just encrypt end checksum it so that in case it is lost, it can be retrieved, checked against the checksum WITHOUT having to know the content?
Also, any sane system in such an environment such as the NSA should have full access protocols, logged at least with three backups and automated access-pattern analysis and reporting. In an NSA-environment, I would rather have *more* false positives and than the other way around in case an alert goes off.
Not to say I condone what the NSA did - definitely not and in my view it is not only unconstitutional and illegal (except, obviously, the foreign surveillance, which seems not illegal) but it is also completely immoral and unethical.
But regardless: In such an environment, I would not only triple-encrypt but also log every access, failed or otherwise, and have automatic access-pattern analysis software running all the time. Especially when I have new temps or employees, I wouldn't even allow them access to "real" data for the first 3-6 months, using a TrustedOS with fake-access layers. Apart from that, I would want an OS that also prohibits copying of any data to any untrusted device... well, you get the gist.
Basically, the GDR (former Eastern Germany) had similar problems with their border guards: guards would usually patrol the border in pairs (two guards at any given time). And this is obviously a necessary thing in border patrol.
But since the government couldn't trust their guards and since there indeed was a possibility that the guards would just jump across the border to Western Germany, they had a brilliant plan: (1) they made sure that each of the guards came from a completely different area of the country, and (2) that they didn't spend too much time with together in order to build trust between them. So, for the case (2), the government decided to create new pairs every week or so... it worked quite successfully.
Now, the question, obviously, is whether you *want* to be something like the former Eastern German Government.
I believe there are a lot of ways of protecting data against malicious employees - one being the way the Eastern German Government did (this might be a good solution actually for the NSA). Other ways are making sure that the employees in question can never copy any data by any means, whether it is by blocking USB-ports, not having any drives, not allowing *any* personal devices at all, including no cameras, smartphones, etc. You might even force the people to use a company-provided mobile phone even for their private calls (without snooping into their calls) without cameras, data connection, etc (just calls+sms).
Lastly, you could consider using a TrustedOS with levels such as B1-B3 or even A1 or Beyond-A1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCSEC
I knew TISX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Information_Systems, which had (afaik) the only B2-TOS at that time. It was quite ingenious how it worked...
I throw all my movies, tv shows, and songs into directories on a NAS.
Then I point plex mediaserver to the directory - running on a Mac (currently an iMac or MacMini) and use Plex client to access it.
If Plex stops any support and kills the app, I can switch to XBMC or any other solution - heck I can even switch to iTunes (all my movies/TV shows are in mp4-format anyway) or just use something like VLC to watch them.
I *do* have a copy of my music on Google Music Services (20k songs) and on iTunes Match, for the convenience - and it is also good to have to additional backup places on top of my other backups, but apart from that, I don't rely solely on these cloud services. I.e., cloud is a nice to have, but not my sole source of media/document access - merely a secondary or tertiary or so backup solution... (for non-sensitive, non-private data; e.g. my photos are NOT on cloud, except the ones I actively make public).
Hmm, early in my life I learned that "if a pupil doesn't learn, it's not his fault. It's the teacher's job..."
I can't agree with you out of my experience as most of the people I'm "supporting" (in terms of tech support within friends and family) DO understand the need for security, encryption and so on. Normally they wouldn't know much about it, but it took me some time to explain them, in plain english, why it is so important to encrypt data if it's either sensitive, private or a combination thereof, including emails, private hard discs, photos, and anything uploaded to the cloud.
P.S: My insight about teacher vs pupil didn't come when I was a pupil - instead, rather when I started being a teacher...
Thank you very much for this great explanation. Now I understand.
So, in fact, what is happening now is exactly what these laws were meant to prevent - e.g. with regards to Tesla Motors. I have experienced these unwanted side effects every time any government tried to regulate an industry with very specific laws with the intent of protecting one group of people from another... be it consumers against Big Business or one side of business against another.
Thanks again, this helped me understand the history of these laws - though they make even less sense now (though I understand the circumstances back in the 1940's & 1950's)
Thanks for the answer.
I probably was not accurate enough in my question. Question was rather "how this happened and still happens..."
Now, a little search provides a really good link I found: http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm
I thought there was a real reason historically but it just seems that car dealers effectively lobbied their state governments to introduce these "Franchise Laws" after they were established. And it was in order to "... protect their investment in real estate and showrooms, etc..." - So, as you said, the traditional protectionist malaise as everywhere (reminds me of the stupid solar industry in Europe which actually managed to convince the EU Commission to introduce tariffs on Chinese solar panels... up to 67% ... now the Chinese are striking back with tariffs on European products *sigh* - will this never end?)
From what I understand, Elon Musk wants to control the Purchase Experience as close as Apple does with their computers.
Remember the time before Apple Stores? When you went into a computer store to buy a Mac, the sales guys would try to sell you anything else but not a Mac. Because it was so much easier for them.
With the Apple Store, that all changed and the purchase experienced is fully managed by Apple.
Elon Musk, being an adherent of Steve Jobs' approach, also wants to display his products in the best possible way and he believes that only sales people who exclusively sell Tesla cars (i.e. stores that only sell Tesla cars) can sell it right and that these people should then be also employed by Tesla Motors.
I get that and if I was him, I would do the same. This is really a crucial time for Tesla (and electric cars in general) and I wouldn't want any GM, Ford or Chrysler-sales person trying to sell my cars - next to all the other cars he has on display...
I'm sorry, this may sound stupid, but can anyone point me to directions where I can find something about WHY this is the case? I.e. why is it forbidden for car manufacturers in the US to sell cars directly to consumers?
I'm not native, so I don't know and it sounds outlandish for. The TFA has a link but the text there is awful to read, so any help really appreciated.
Thanks
a former European
The human brain can perform around 200-2,000 Petaflops (0.2 - 2 Exaflops) - when we compare it to computers.
The problem is that we can only access the conscious part, which is probably in the range of 100-200 Flops (Note, no mega, giga, or tera).
The subconscious part is where the real processing power lies. If we could simulate that in a computer, it would be tremendous in maybe understanding how it works.
For example: the human brain has the ability to "foresee" the future within a timeframe of around 0.2 seconds (or less). How does it do this? How does that work? Is it only a result of huge processing power or something else? Does two exaflops result in consciousness?? Questions after questions...
First learned it the wrong way - VIC 20 / C64 - Basic (with the C64 'programming manual')
Then learned the right way - PDP11/23 at the high school where I started programming first in Pascal and later in C... - in fact, I didn't really study it - It was not mandatory teaching but the school had a PDP11/23 clone and they offered "voluntary" courses for pupil. I couldn't join so I complained so loudly until they gave me an account on that machine "just to shut him up" - and I started learning programming "the right way"... Self-taught.
When thinking about DRM, remember that the company's ONLY purpose for existing is to make a profit.
Wrong, and completely wrong. The profit is a means to an end - even, especially, within a company perspective. Basically, the company needs to make a profit in order to be able to pay an interest on equity and loans, to invest into newer products/services, i.e. to invest in further growth (however you may define 'growth') and to have some money left for 'rainy days'.
Profit here is defined as the difference between revenue and costs - if revenue is higher, you have a profit, if it's lower you have a loss.
In any case, the profit is NOT the only purpose for a company's existence - it is a means to to exist, being able to re-invest and grow and pay an interest to those people who provided it with the capital it is using.
The assumption that companies' ONLY purpose of existence is profit is a fallacy and has been debunked already with Adam Smith.
Going back to the OP (an on-topic):
No, there is in fact not a really good reason for DRM from the consumer's perspective - DRM usually restricts the consumer's right to do whatever he/she wants with the product in question.
There is one potential use of DRM though - if, by using certain DRM techniques, you (as the producer) offer differentiated pricing, e.g.:
1) Watch/read/listen once - 0.19 USD
2) Watch/read/listen unlimited times - 0.99 USD
3) Unlimited watch/read/listen incl re-sale and lending to friends & family (used-sale) rights - 1.49 USD
4) Unlimited rights, except creating and distributing multiple copies for commercial purposes - 1.99 USD
In this case, it could be of interest even for consumers as the pricing is tiered based on the rights - again, it is important that the *pricing* matches the rights (the prices above are just examples)
Oh, and forgot to mention:
I would suggest NOT to use any (commercial) solution that stores your emails in some weird BLOB from which there is no export possibility at one point. As long as any (commercial) solution supports something like maildir, you will be fine - anything else will be a sure guarantee that you won't be able to read your emails anymore once the solution-provider is gone and there is no documentation about their storage format.
Lastly: on backups - don't look for anything that is email-specific - I mean with that: treat your emails like any other important file/data that you have. There's nothing wrong with being paranoid with regards to backups (I have a 4-level-backup system for my emails, photos, music, and other important documents... the only thing I'm missing at the moment is an off-site backup solution for these...)
There were enough really good solutions proposed above:
1) Standardize on one format - preferably maildir(1)
2) Convert all your emails into rfcxxxx (i forgot - but you can look it up) and copy to maildir-format
3) on Linux or other *nix-based systems, you can use many tools to search
(1) I have 15 years of email, about 60GB, roughly 120,000 Emails (sent + received). I use Mac OSX, so I have stored them in Mail.app - because Mail.app uses something like maildir-format and I will never lose my emails, even when I switch to another client.
Every time a year ends, I create a two new folders under Archives/Inbox and Archives/Sent respectively with the year in for digits, e.g.:
Archives/Inbox/2012
Archives/Sent/2012
Then I move the emails to the respective folder. From then on, I exclude these entries from "standard default search"; Only when I purposefully want to search in them, I choose to do so.
This has worked quite well for fifteen years now - and before Mail.app, I used to use PowerMail, Eudora, Outlook Express, Mutt, Pine, and so on - now I standardized on Mail.app with its maildir-structure and am happy.
You, Sir, are starting a new Holy War! It might be the War to End All Wars, but, nevertheless, it is a new Holy War...
Photoshop 1 was only available on a Mac. I remember receiving the first "public beta" (Photoshop 0.9) some time in 1990 or so and it was awesome - jawdroppping awesome...
In any case, you would use MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) those days, which I think is still one of the best team-development tools. And the language-of-choice (well, in fact, nearly the only choice) for developing on a Mac at those days was Pascal + Assembler.
So, it makes sense that this code is Pascal.
All these comments and requests for "blasphemy" etc, somehow remind me of "Fahrenheit 451" - I'm afraid, because of all these demands, we're really on the wrong track and move towards the world described in Fahrenheit 451...
Start with that and you might have still have a girlfriend afterwards
I already commented on Tomi Ahone elsewhere, but here is my repeat. Tomi Ahonen and people like him did all this mess at Nokia. When you read his bio, you'll see the worst self-praising bulls... I've ever seen in my life. And no, he really has no clue.
I had couple of articles written between 1984 - 1987, all restored without any problems. Reason? They were written on paper, which shows that that's probably one of the longest-lasting and most transferable/restorable data storage media. http://www.caps-project.org/cache/DigitalMediaLifeExpectancyAndCare.html Then again, the access time, especially the random access time, is not really good. Anyway, I could restore them to harddisc easily and without any mistakes - I could actually fix some mistakes in the original file. Joking aside, I have an original NeXTcube OD and would like to restore some data from that, but I can't find a NeXTcube OD drive anymore... Any help?
Luckily, there is also the European High Court of Human Rights as well as other EU regulations, which would prohibit such a law. Sometimes, the EU, even though it's a bureaucratic monster, seems to be the last resort for citizens of countries like Italy. (Yes, I know, the EU itself also introduces some stupid, unconstitutional regulations, but again, there we have the European Courts of Appeal ...)
Actually, throughout Schengen countries (this is around 23 in Europe), you don't need any ID to travel except for airline travel where they check your name on your boarding pass against your name on a photo ID (but this could also be just a drivers license, or any other official looking photo ID) - and this check is done by airline personnel only.
When you travel by car, feet, train or ship throughout Schengen countries, you will notice the border crossing only by change of street signs, language or car plates - or by the ratio of beer:wine, good cuisine:bad cuisine, and so on.
Check out Wikipedia on the terrorism in Turkey:
-snip-
According to official figures released by the Turkish military for the 1984-2008 period, the conflict has resulted in the capture of 14,000 PKK members, and the death of 17,000 PKK members, 6,482 soldiers, and 5,560 civilians.[5] The conflict particularly affected the tourism industry.
-snip-
And still traveling to Turkey is as easy as to most other European countries, especially as a EU-citizen, you only need an ID-card, nothing more.
I doubt that there are anyone in our current government here in Germany with any sense at all: talking about shooting down planes, collecting internet usage data, introducing "stop-signs" in order to "prevent" child pornography, banning violent games, heck they even briefly discussed banning "Gotcha".
No, seriously, I lost the believe that there is any one person in politics in Germany with any sense at all. They are all "... a bunch of jerks to be put... " - to paraphrase Douglas Adams (rip).
Back in 1988/89, while I was working for a small HW/SW company in Berlin, I inherited code from four different "groups" of people:
1. From one external developer who was supposed to write some embedded stuff in C:
He delivered the code and went on holidays to the caribbean (I am not exaggerating). Imagine, this was the time without email and mobile phones. Actually, I didn't inherit it directly but a colleague. And someone else had given the contract to that external person without asking us.
Anyway, we had to install it on a mission-critical power amplifying thingy (I don't know what it was, I'm a software guy). It just didn't work... Then my colleague, who didn't know C, asked me if I could have a look at the code because he didn't really understand it (he was an assembler coder only). The code looked like this: ... ... (you get the picture here) ... ... ... ...
#define BEGIN {
#define END }
#define THEN {
#define IF if
#define WHILE while
#define FOR for
#define FUNCTION
#define PROCEDURE void
#define REAL float
FUNCTION DOSOMETHING (REAL in, INT out)
BEGIN
FOR (...) BEGIN
END
IF (...) THEN
ELSE
END
END
--- I started crying
2. It was from a physicist who worked there as programmer for a while and left. He developed in Turbo Pascal.
The code was really nicely structured, he had written a really nice guide how to structure and write code. It was readably without any comment - perfect.
The one thing... it was the most inefficient code I had ever seen and it used some tricks of Turbo Pascal 3, which drove me really crazy when I tried to bring it forward to TP4/TP5 (was it OVLs? I dunno anymore)
3. Two external guys developed another piece of software as a new module for (2) above. They insisted that they should use Turbo-C. I don't know who said "yes", but after a while I received their code to integrate it as a separate module (actually separate exe) to our package.
Integration was no problem, it worked, everything was fine. Except when a client asked for some changes. I had to dive into the code and try doing some changes... Well, ... it was object-oriented C - no, it was NOT C++, it was their own flavour of object-oriented C they had developed...
--- I started crying again.
4. The last example was actually an operating system we developed for a small self-developed computer based on C-64 (it was for QS-systems for car manufacturers; this piece of hardware had built-in analogue and digital measurement-device inputs and so on). The code was beautiful, it was fast, efficient and ... readable. It did everything we wanted and I understood everything. It was faster than a C64 and so on...
I really loved that "OS"... the drawback?? He was such a genius that he became an alcoholic and had to leave the company and we couldn't continue developing the stuff anymore...
Throughout my 27 years of computing, the worst thing that happened to me was inheriting software from various different sources at the same time. But other than that, all the other stuff I can only say: "Been there, done that" (yes, even punch-cards, PDP/11s, Vixens... ahm, VAXens, etc. -- no, no magnetic cylinders)